Nicola Kirk: Author and Collector of Paranormal Stories and Other Strange Encounters

Posts tagged ‘Dreams’

The above image will lull you into a false sense of security over what is yet to come…

I’ve written before about some of the weird dreams I have. My Dearly Bemused tells me he very rarely remembers dreams and, based on the dream I had the other night, sometimes I envy him. The one I had… well, it left me shuddering with revulsion and rather pleased that my daughter came in to see me at 3am because she’d managed, somehow, to smack her head on the wall in her sleep. An impressive feat and one that I didn’t mind getting out of a nice warm bed to deal with because… the dream was about spiders. Not your common or garden diddly little guy that you can turn a blind eye to when you spot it hiding in the corner of your sitting room, but mind-blowing huge ones that appear to be more intelligent than the average person. The kind of spider that you suspect has been observing you for quite some time, and now knows your daily schedule, what your middle name is and where you hide your chocolate stash.

If I dream of a house, it’s generally always my parent’s house. I haven’t lived in that house for about twenty years. That’s quite some time but I retain a very close tie to that house. It’s the only house I remember growing up in because we moved into it when I was three and I stayed there until I met my Other Half. It’s the house my grandmother also lived and died in, so I suppose it’s no surprise that it’s the house my brain likes to visit when it sleeps. But for some reason, when I dream of that house, it’s never quite as I know it. There’s always something a bit different about it. In this particular dream, I was looking for a way in because at my parents’ house you never go in the front door. No, no, we use the tradesman entrance. I know not why, it’s just something we’ve always done. In my dream, when I realised the front door was not going to be opening anytime soon, I made my way back down the front steps and went past the garage, which was open for some reason. That garage hasn’t been open for many a year, although I know it does open because I remember seeing it when I was a kid and thinking it looked as if B&Q had just exploded in there. Now the garage was open slightly and the light was on. It was getting dark outside so I thought I’d nip in and turn the light off, shut the garage door and then… Oh, hold on a minute, there appeared to be some kind of mini office in there now off to one side that I had never seen before and… well, I can’t leave that light on either because dad will go loopy over the wasted electricity.

And found out very quickly why I never go in there because the place was festooned with horrible cobwebs filled with bits of dead or discarded spider parts. You know the way their bodies disintegrate and fall apart and (shudder) …well, there are no words to describe it really and that’s quite some confession coming from a writer. But I’m not a total wuss, I told myself, and even though my skin was crawling fit to leave my body, I bravely made my way over to that odd little office bit which I know doesn’t actually exist, and reached out for the light switch. And then stopped. Because sitting just above the light switch in a cloud of webs was one of the biggest spiders I’ve ever seen. I paused, quite literally shivering with horror in my sleep. I started to surface out of sleep at this point because Disgust Mode was desperately shaking Sleep Mode by the throat screaming ‘What the hell is going on here?!’ But the horror wasn’t quite over yet. Because above that spider was something quite magnificent, in a deranged, make your skin freeze in a way you wouldn’t believe possible kind of way. Very rarely do I get that feeling but heaven knows I got it then, because through the layers of web I could make out legs as thick as my fingers, attached to a body as big as the palm of my hand. And it didn’t even have the grace to be one of those fuzzy looking spiders either. Nooo, this bastard was shiny, black and I remember thinking that if one of those legs were to break, it would make a sound like a snapping twig.

“Mummy, I hit my head on the wall!”

Daughter dearest, you will never know how happy I was to hear about your plight at 3am that chilly morning so I could nurse the nonexistent bump on your little head back to sleep.

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Dreams are curious creatures. I’ve heard all the usual explanations for dreams: it’s your brain having a sort through of all the experiences you’ve had and so on but what, I ask you, is Kim Basinger doing popping up in my dreams when she is the last person I would be thinking about (no offence, Kim, but it’s been a while). I’ve always had very vivid dreams, most of which I forget like everyone else, but sometimes I get caught up in a right humdinger (remember the one about Lady Gaga and strange men eating KFC?) Well this one was kind of in the same bracket but without the extra side orders.

Recently, I was very sad to learn about the passing of my childhood best friend. We had drifted apart over the years, but you never expect to hear that someone you grew up with has died. Dreaming about my friend should not have been a shock. And dreaming about us in a situation that we both had fond memories of (being at school together) seemed like the perfect place to find her. She was in her school uniform, aged in her early teens, and I passed her in a corridor on my way to a lesson somewhere. I stopped her and she looked at me with a peaceful expression but she didn’t quite look as if she was really seeing me. I asked her if she was okay and she said that she was. I put my hand on her arm and said I had heard that she had died and she laughed, seemingly a bit annoyed, and asked me where I had heard that one. I told her another school friend had told me and she snorted and said ‘why on earth did she do that?’ My friend looked… different. I’m not sure what it was about her, whether it was because I was remembering her as her younger self, or I was perhaps having trouble remembering her face and my mind was filling in the missing details (although I can see her as clear as day in my mind while I write this). It was quite an emotional experience because I knew, of course, deep down, that she was no longer living. Then my grandmother made an appearance too – not sure what she was doing at my old school – but she hardly seemed to notice me and just went about her business. I moved on to my old form room where some old school friends who I haven’t thought about in a long time were sitting around chatting. One of them was sporting a black eye. Well, he had been a particularly irritating child at school, so maybe that was a subconscious wish on my part.

WE NEED A BIGGER TUB…

We sat around watching some kind of slide show about clocks – what else? – when I noticed a stack of old looking documents beside me and I thought, ‘ they must be from the asylum!’ Of course. Where else would a stack of old looking documents have come from? It’s my dream, and I say they came from an asylum. I picked up an old white envelop that was busy turning a nice shade of brown and noticed it was dated long ago. It appeared to be an envelop full of photographs. I pulled one out to look at it and it was a photo of an inmate taking a bath whilst at an asylum. The inmate was wrapped in some kind of sheeting and looked for all the world to be… wait, was that Kim Basinger? I frowned at the photo wondering what on earth she was doing there and then I became aware that there was a figure standing just behind me. It was ethereal and glowing and looked a little bit curious as to why I was holding an old sepia photo of her having a bath in asylum settings. The ghost of Ms Basinger looked at me for a moment and, feeling that I was holding something that was very much her property, I gave her the envelope of photos with an muttered apology. She smiled and I knew that if I looked away for a moment then she would be gone. And I was right. I turned to look at my schoolmate with his black eye and then when I turned back she had, indeed, gone. I felt as if I had experienced something truly incredible. Although now I am somewhat concerned that something has happened to Kim, so I’m just going to do a quick Google to make sure she’s okay…

I wonder what it is that makes us dream about seemingly random people. And I wonder if it means anything. It was nice to see my friend one last time though.

Dreams are funny things. They can be so vivid you wake up wondering if it had been a dream at all. I dreamed once that I’d received a letter in the post and then, when I woke up, spent the best part of the morning looking for the damned thing.

Never did find it. Odd that.

Wake Up, Twitter – If I’m Up, So Are You!

Early one morning whilst perusing Twitter (babies don’t care what time they get you up, but when they do, you’d better make sure you have something interesting to keep you awake while they have their bottle) I came across one post that said, ‘everything you dream about is something you’ve seen or done in real life’.

Oh, man, I hope not.

I Can Flyyyyy!!!

I remember many of my dreams, which are generally really nice – dreams of flying or discovering lost tombs (yes, I’ve had one or two of those dreams – Lara Croft has nothing on me). But sometimes I suffer from oddly disturbing dreams. Like the one where I went into my little boy’s room to check on him one night. He was fast asleep in his cot but as I turned to leave I saw an 8-year-old version of him standing next to me in the gloom. The older version of my son grinned up at me and then abruptly disappeared into thin air. I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen an 8-year-old version of my son in real life, so why would I dream of him now? When I woke up from that dream I felt absolutely terrified for some reason and had the worst case of goosepimples and shivers I can ever recall having. It was one of those moments I thought only existed in bad sitcoms where the sleeper sits bolt upright in bed. My flesh literally crawled.

Who’s Reaching Out To Hold Your Hand At Night?

And only a couple of weeks back, I woke up because I was certain I could feel someone holding my hands, which were laying on top of the covers. The hands holding mine were freezing cold – I could feel them. I remember a little voice in my head screeching ‘they’re holding your hands! They’re holding your hands!‘ Again, I woke up feeling terrified and freezing cold with goosepimples running over my skin like a million icy ants.

What makes us dream these things? If it’s our brains sorting out the things its experienced during the course of the day, why would I dream about a futuristic version of my son or that someone with horribly cold hands was holding mine while I slept?

And don’t get me started on the dreams I’ve had about Gene Hackman trying to murder me (I mean, really, why?) or someone shooting me in the back while I walked home from a school I’ve never attended…

Therapy, anyone?

Have you ever had strange dreams that have left you feeling spooked or wondering ‘where on earth did that come from?!’

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I have created this blog to collect weird, supernatural and paranormal stories from around the British Isles. I am also collecting myths and legends. Please feel free to email me any of your own strange experiences and/or myths and legends to weirdworld@hotmail.co.uk. Enter your email address below if you would like to receive notification of the latest posts.

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